No Substitute
by iviscrit
Summary: Oneshot. "But it's been a long while since he has played, and things are not the same. It's not enough to appease his anger and his violence has not expended itself." Voldemort deals with disappointment. Please R&R!


A/N: Hey all. I try a less light-hearted approach to T/M... I get inside Voldemort's head when he doesn't get the job. Hope y'all like it.

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><p>The news that he won't be returning to Hogwarts, and worse still that he had to hear this in a bloody interview doesn't really impact him as he strips off his dampened cloak, his arms heavy and throat dry. The news does not impact him fully until he has walked down more than half the corridor, annoyance building and finally morphing into true outrage that Dumbledore dared to reject his application. He knows that he must have been the most desirable of the candidates, and his anger builds to a crescendo. It's blatant discrimination against intelligence, he rants in his mind. The number of average people is appalling and naturally they all flock to back up one another... and of course, all this was compounded by the fact that Dumbledore had a personal vendetta against him. She too is repulsed by this and has nothing to say. Minerva is silent as she walks next to him, so quiet that he barely registers her presence. He feels her holding his arm in a corner of his mind, but doesn't register where she's taking him until he hears the door slam shut behind them.<p>

"Tom," she says carefully, "it's all right."

"No." His words are clipped, as though they are being dragged out of him. "You do not understand."

She ignores him, taking his hand, and she goes to the piano, taking him with her, his words to her from five years ago tumbling through her mind -_when I feel angry, I play a stirring Bach canon_- but when he said that, it was an etude that was coursing through her brain, and she places his hand on the keys.

"Do you still play?" she inquired softly. "You never mention it when you write...on the rare occassion that you do."

"I learned from the best," he answers, ignoring her final statement, more accusation than anything else. He lets his anger sink into his fingertips the moment he sits down at the bench, Minerva crushed against his side, and his fingers fly across the keyboard. He starts the opening triads fairly calmly, his nails soundless against the ivory, but he quickly turns violent, his tempo increasing and the keys ringing like bells and the whole of the piano creaking in protest as he furiously pours all of his anger and passion into the song. When he shoves back the bench, spent, he feels light, fingertips tingling, mind incandescent. But it's been a long while since he has played, and things are not the same. It's not enough to appease his anger and his violence has not expended itself. Minerva can see this, and she takes his arm, gripping it gently.

"I've missed you," she says at last. "You are so changed... why don't you write to me anymore?"

"I've been busy." He wonders if he is really as changed as she is. Doesn't she see the differences in herself? Her glasses are now a permanent addition, her hair pulled back from her face giving her a severe, older look... and the Minerva he had known would have become impassioned with him, and perhaps played a duet, not stand behind him wordlessly as he bruises the hammers and loosens the strings of her instrument.

"And I've missed you all the more," she murmurs, embracing him. "Don't be upset, you don't need a post at Hogwarts to carry on with your work..." She tilts her head back to look at him. "But it would make it easier for me to see you."

"Why won't you join me?" he whispers into her hair, and he doesn't need to hear her words of protest to know her answer, unchanged even after five years apart.

"Do you need to bring up something like this now?" she demands, pulling away from him abruptly. "Can't we catch up before we fulfill our routine of arguing?" She pulls him towards her again, and the evening breeze from the open window blows her hair into his face. He closes his eyes, drinking in her scent. "We have so much time to make up for," she says, her voice almost too soft to hear, but he can read the look in her eyes and her thoughts are wholly unguarded against a Legilimens of his caliber.

He is never completely at ease, not even when he's with Minerva, the enormity of his mind pressing down upon him like a burden. And she sighs, her attitude quickly turning heated even as he hardens himself against the insipid selection panel and Dumbledore, a series of middle aged men and women in dress robes, their faces revealing disdain for something exceptional. His mental picture stereotypes them, as they likely stereotype applicants with promise- _too_ much promise, even as he is attentive to her in every respect as Minerva drags him down onto her. The night elapses in windswept hair and cotton sheets, in heated conversation afterward and her tearfully and furiously threatening to walk away from him as she does after almost every fight. She has, as always, fed off of his rage, and he in turn is calmed by her presence. But she'll always return, he knows, always, because no matter how much she tells herself that she is tired of the anger, tired of the conversations, tired of the disputes, and tired of working herself up into a passion on his account, she knows a part of her is drawn to it. And he is drawn to her too; she helps perpetuate the mirage that is to a great degree his life outside of his work. The attraction, he concedes, is there, and he knows that the love is there on her part. But he never can understand why it was her, not him, who walked away in the end. He almost wishes he hadn't destroyed the instrument, a gift from her, because after she leaves him forever, he finds he needs that outlet for his anger...

And there is no substitute.

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><p><strong>AN: Please review! And tell me if I should write more angry!Voldemort or not. **


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